Pneumatic tires with puncture sealing properties is known in the art. Such tires have included providing the tire with a strip of unvulcanized rubber that has puncture sealing properties or employing an encased or encapsulated sealant material between calendered layers which is located either in the tire or on the radially inner side of the tire.
Whichever method is used, if the sealant layer is not applied to the inner side of the tire following vulcanization, the sealant layer must be build into the tire like a conventional tire component on a tire building drum. In order for the sealant material to be handled as a conventional tire component, it must have sufficient stiffness. However, an increased stiffness in the sealant material results is increased viscosity of the material to the point where the material does not seal punctures effectively.
The present invention is directed to a method of building a tire and a puncture sealing tire having a low viscosity sealant material incorporated therein.